The contribution of Jewish inscriptions to the study of Judaism

Abstract

An important resource for the study of Judaism from the time of Alexander the Great down to the Byzantine period is the large and ever-growing body of Jewish inscriptions. To date, over two thousand texts, the majority from the third century ce or later, have come to light. Of these, roughly one third are from Judaea/Palestine, the rest mainly from the Mediterranean provinces of the Roman Empire, Italy and, above all, Rome itself. Access to the Diasporan evidence has been greatly improved within the last fifteen years: through the efforts of scholars based mainly at Tübingen and Cambridge, England, we now have up-to-date editions of the Jewish inscriptions of Cyrene, Aphrodisias, Egypt, Rome and western Europe. And once J. H. Kroll's edition of the Sardis synagogue inscriptions and H. Bloedhorn's Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse in Griechenland, Kleinasien und Syrien become available, we shall be able largely to dispense with the Diasporan sections of J. B. Frey's Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum. More problematic is the Judaean/Palestinian material. Many texts, particularly ossuary inscriptions from the last hundred years of the Second Temple period, remain scattered and/or unedited. Such thematic assemblages as have been made (e.g. of synagogue inscriptions) are not only partial but difficult of access for the Hebrewless reader. Of many texts (e.g. the epitaphs from Jaffa), CIJ II , with all its imperfections, still provides the only easily accessible version. Only of the inscriptions from Beth Shearim and Masada do comprehensive modern editions exist.

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